Fairview man sentenced to 8 years for sexual contact with 12-year-old

By PETER J. SAMPSON

Staff writer |

The Record

A Fairview man, convicted of sexual contact with a 12-year-old girl he courted on Facebook, but acquitted of the more serious charge of rape, was sentenced Friday to eight years in state prison and will face deportation to Guatemala upon his release.

During a hearing in Hackensack, Superior Court Judge Patrick J. Roma told Marvin Flores Gamez, 22, that he had no business romancing a 12-year-old child. Though it was wrong for the girl to cut school and go with him and another couple to an apartment, the judge said she did not deserve to be forced into an experience that will likely haunt her for the rest of her life.

“She is never going to be the same. Psychological harm is just as detrimental as physical harm,” the judge told the defendant.

“Quite frankly, it was sheer stupidity on your part to do something like this,” the judge said.

Gamez’s attorney, Landry Belizaire, said his client was an immature man of 20 who “did not understand the ways of the world” and exercised bad judgment when he began courting the underage girl. In a plea for leniency, he noted his client had dropped out of school in ninth grade to work and help support his parents and a dozen siblings.

Assistant Bergen County Prosecutor Marybel Ramirez said the defendant spent months “grooming” the girl on the social network, telling her how pretty she was and professing his love, in a bid to bed her.

When she resisted his advances, he pulled her down and began disrobing her, the prosecutor said. “He forcibly held her down, pulled off her panties and climbed on top of her,” she said. “He took it because she didn’t want to give it up.”

“She learned a hard lesson by going in that room with a stranger who told her that he loved her,” Ramirez said. “He must pay the penalty” for his crime before he is deported, she added.

Fairview man sentenced to 8 years for sexual contact with 12-year-old

By PETER J. SAMPSON

Staff writer |

The Record

A Fairview man, convicted of sexual contact with a 12-year-old girl he courted on Facebook, but acquitted of the more serious charge of rape, was sentenced Friday to eight years in state prison and will face deportation to Guatemala upon his release.

During a hearing in Hackensack, Superior Court Judge Patrick J. Roma told Marvin Flores Gamez, 22, that he had no business romancing a 12-year-old child. Though it was wrong for the girl to cut school and go with him and another couple to an apartment, the judge said she did not deserve to be forced into an experience that will likely haunt her for the rest of her life.

“She is never going to be the same. Psychological harm is just as detrimental as physical harm,” the judge told the defendant.

“Quite frankly, it was sheer stupidity on your part to do something like this,” the judge said.

Gamez’s attorney, Landry Belizaire, said his client was an immature man of 20 who “did not understand the ways of the world” and exercised bad judgment when he began courting the underage girl. In a plea for leniency, he noted his client had dropped out of school in ninth grade to work and help support his parents and a dozen siblings.

Assistant Bergen County Prosecutor Marybel Ramirez said the defendant spent months “grooming” the girl on the social network, telling her how pretty she was and professing his love, in a bid to bed her.

When she resisted his advances, he pulled her down and began disrobing her, the prosecutor said. “He forcibly held her down, pulled off her panties and climbed on top of her,” she said. “He took it because she didn’t want to give it up.”

“She learned a hard lesson by going in that room with a stranger who told her that he loved her,” Ramirez said. “He must pay the penalty” for his crime before he is deported, she added.